RUTHERFORD (John, M. D.), one of the illustrious founders of the medical school in the university of Edinburgh, was the son of the Rev. Mr Rutherford minister of Yarrow, in the county of Selkirk, North Britain. He was born on the 1st August 1695, and received the rudiments of his education at the parish school of Selkirk; where, from his future proficiency, there is every reason to believe that he made a rapid progress in the knowledge of the Latin and Greek languages.
After the death of his father, he went to Edinburgh in 1708 or 1710, where, in the university, he applied himself to the study of classical literature, mathematics, and natural philosophy. The celebrated Dr Pitcairn was then so highly respected for his medical skill, that it is not improbable but that a laudable desire of obtaining a portion of similar fame may have turned the attention of young Rutherford to the study of medicine. Be that as it may, he engaged himself apprentice to Mr Alexander Nesbit, at that time an eminent surgeon in Edinburgh, with whom he remained till 1716, when he went to London. There he attended some hospitals, and the lectures read on anatomy by Dr Douglas, on surgery by André, and on materia medica by Strother.
After a year's residence in London, he returned to Edinburgh; and having settled his affairs in that city, he went to Leyden, which, from the lectures of Boerhaave, was then the most celebrated medical school in Europe. In 1719 he went into France, and was at the end of July in that year admitted to the degree of M. D. in the university of Rheims. He passed the following winter in Paris, chiefly for the sake of Winslow's private demonstrations in anatomy; and in 1720 he returned to Britain.
In 1721 he settled as a physician in Edinburgh; and soon afterwards Drs Rutherford, Sinclair, Plummer, and Innes, purchased a laboratory, where they prepared compound medicines. This was an art then but little known in Scotland; and as a commercial speculation, the laboratory must therefore have proved very advantageous to the partners. But they had higher objects in view than commerce. They demonstrated, as far as they were then known, the operations of chemistry
midst to a numerous audience; and soon afterwards, by the advice of their old master Boerhaave, they extended their lectures to the other branches of physic. In 1725 they were appointed joint professors in the university; where, we believe, each, for some time, read lectures in every department of medical science, anatomy excepted, and carried forward their classes in rotation. The anatomical lectures were read by the elder Monro, who had been settled a year or two before them in Edinburgh, and whose eminence in that department is known to all Europe.
On the death of Dr Innes, a particular branch of medical science was allotted to each of the other three professors. Dr Plummer was appointed professor of chemistry and materia medica, Dr Sinclair of the institutes of physic, and Dr Rutherford of the practice; and thus was a regular medical school established in Edinburgh by Monro, Plummer, Sinclair, and Rutherford. The lectures on the institutes and practice of physic were then, and for many years afterwards, delivered in Latin; and such was Dr Rutherford's command of that language, that on every thing connected with medicine, he talked in it more fluently than in the language of his country.
Whether it was any improvement in the mode of medical education in Edinburgh to change the language of the lectures from Latin to English, is perhaps more than questionable. We have now dispersed over the country a number of illiterate men, practising as surgeons, and even as physicians, who never could have boasted of having gone through a regular course of medical instruction, had the lectures continued to be delivered in the language in which they were begun. Foreigners, too, would not have been under the necessity of learning a new language, before they could enter on the studies, for the cultivation of which they came to Scotland; and though the medical classes might not have been so crowded perhaps as at present, the individuals composing them would have been at least as respectable. Whether Dr Rutherford reasoned in this
way we know not; but he continued to lecture in Latin as long as he filled the practical chair.
About the year 1748 he introduced a very great improvement in the course of medical education. Sensible that abstract lectures on the symptoms and the mode of treating various diseases, of which the students know little but the names, could scarcely be of any benefit, he had for some time encouraged his pupils to bring patients to him on Saturday, when he inquired into the nature of their diseases, and prescribed for them in the presence of the class. This gave rise to the course of clinical lectures; the utility of which was so obvious, that it was enacted, by a decree of the senate of the university, that no man should be admitted to an examination for his doctor's degree, who had not attended those lectures; to which an excellent hospital, then lately erected (see EDINBURGH, in the Encyclopaedia), gave the professors every opportunity of doing ample justice. To men who mean to live by the practice of physic, and have no inordinate ambition to raise their fame by fanciful theories, this is perhaps the most valuable course of lectures that is given in Edinburgh; and if so, Dr Rutherford must be considered as one of the greatest benefactors of the medical school.
To untried theories in physic he was indeed no friend; and we have heard a favourite and very able pupil of his, who knew him well, and respected him highly, affirm that, to his knowledge, Dr Rutherford retained his professorship longer than he otherwise would have chosen to do; merely that he might keep out a speculatist, whom he knew to be aspiring to the practical chair. Finding at last in the late Dr John Gregory (see GREGORY, Encycl.) a successor entirely to his mind, he resigned to him in 1765, after having taught medicine in its different departments for upwards of forty years. He lived, after this period, loved by his friends, and revered by many eminent physicians, who had been his pupils, till 1779, when he died in Edinburgh, where he had spent the greater part of his life, in the 84th year of his age.